Letters to the Editor, Jan. 20, 2019: Locals will be disadvantaged by restricted access at Point Lobos

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Restricting access to Point Lobos hurts local visitors

All residents of the Monterey area are impacted by visitors, a mainstay of our economy that we must accept and accommodate to a reasonable extent. However, the emerging plans to manage the beauty of our local coast by restricting access to Point Lobos State Reserve threatens to severely limit the ability of local residents to enjoy this coastline jewel. Steadily, but quietly, County Supervisor Mary Adams has announced a plan to establish a reservation-only plan to limit who can enter Point Lobos, favoring tourists who plan ahead and disadvantaging locals who decide it would be great to visit this State Park on the spur of the moment. In addition, she proposes eliminating parking on Highway 1 so no one can hike into the Reserve and requiring visitors to take a shuttle bus into the Reserve, the ultimate tourist experience.

Supervisor Adams’ agenda is gaining momentum and will negatively impact local enjoyment of a State Reserve. I support consideration of environmental impacts on our coast, but sustainable hospitality, ecotourism and responsible travel should not be synonyms for restricted local public access to the state parks we support with tax dollars.

Ruthann Donahue, Pacific Grove

A simple, inexpensive way to fix DMV issues

In light of the DMV’s mismanagement and incompetence, not to mention overcrowding, I propose an easy, cost-free way to give it breathing room to address its many problems:

Extend all existing valid California driver licenses and ID cards by two or more years, and issue new ones for seven years instead of five. Also, allow payment options for two-year vehicle registration. That should free up the long lines and allow existing manpower to fix the other pressing matters.

Simple and cost-free; therefore it will probably never happen.

Gregory D. Lee, Pebble Beach

Setting record straight on PG&E’s role

To fact check Eric Peterson’s letter “Agrees PG&E puts profits ahead of safety” (Jan. 16), he states that shareholders’ meetings focus on maximizing dividend payments. PG&E has not paid any shareholder dividends in at least three years. PG&E also will do safety maintenance repairs for heaters and appliances without any charge to customers.

Power was shut off to prevent more wildfires in Northern California. Before the recent Camp Fire. a series of articles in the Chico Enterprise-Record described the hazardous conditions that made Paradise a fire trap that could ignite from the smallest sources.

It really irks me that the PUC claims they can violate the constitution by taking privately held property, like PG&E Co., for public use without just compensation. If our state manages a privately owned utility, I suppose it will be a model of efficiency like the Department of Motor Vehicles where employees were paid to sleep at their desks.

Bill Graham, Salinas

Recycled water cleaner than current contaminants

John Moore’s letter about the Pure Water Monterey/Regional Urban Water Augmentation Project to be completed next summer by Monterey One Water and the Marina Coast Water District is highly alarmist. Yet he missed some important points:

The point of PWM putting more water into the Seaside Basin is to fight off seawater intrusion in that basin.

M1W will continuously test the steps in its advanced recycling process before injection.

For decades the following have been seeping without treatment into the Seaside Basin, especially when it rains: residue from the excrement of every cat, dog, bird and other wild animal that does its business over the Seaside Basin; every pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer that anyone has applied to their property in the Basin; chemical remnants of explosives detonated in the Fort Ord impact zones that overlie the Seaside Basin; and the oil and other chemicals that drip off our cars in the same vicinity. Yet Cal Am still gets clean drinkable water from the Seaside Basin.

The injected PWM recycled water will be far cleaner than the surface stuff seeping into the Seaside Basin and thus will dilute with cleaner water those contaminants from the surface.